Cutting out gets rid of it instantly while in case of cream you have to wait for days or weeks. Well its true that if you cut it out then there will be a wound and you would have to wait for wound to heal. But, at least, you won't have to deal with itchiness any more: you know wound won't itch UNLESS the roots of fungus went deeper than you thought -- which brings us back to one of the questions asked in OP.

No, you THINK cutting it out gets rid of it instantly. How deep do you have to go to get it out? Do you know? What if it is like an iceberg and it takes up a huge area under the skin, and the ring part is just a small piece that you can see? Be smart, go see a doctor or go to your local pharmacy and ask the pharmacist - a lot of times, the pharmacist can tell you how to take care of things like that with OTC medications and treatments.

'The Prayer of the Children Suffering from Ringworm'
Isadore Pils, 1853.
French

Ancient people mixed about a teaspoon of turmeric juice with honey/consumed it/or applied it to the lesion. Progress from other- more drastic methods has been slow/uneven but we're giant leaps beyond self-mutilation.

Cutting yourself to remove it would be like cutting off your foot if you had nail fungus.

They DO cut off the NAIL to remove fungus. So if you will make an analogy between the skin and the NAIL rather than the foot you would reach opposite conclusion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alista

It's like taking a shovel full of soil from the top of an anthill, throwing it across the yard and declaring yourself ant free.

Lets be careful now. There is a difference between throwing more material vs removing existing material. The analogue of throwing soil on top of anthill would be taking healthy skin and gluing it on top of ringworm. I was not advocating this. On the other hand, the removal of ringworm would be analogous to removing a bunch of soil FROM the yard. This might, in fact, get rid of ants. Now, the crucial part is that ants can go deep into the soil. So you have to dig deep enough in order to remove them all. But that would still be possible, as long as you know how deep.

But, in any case, ringworm is not a worm; its a fungus. So analogy with ants is bad analogy. A much better one would be analogy with mushrooms, which you CAN get rid of by digging them out. Now if you want to talk about the yard I guess the closest thing I can think of would be tares. Now, the classic way of getting rid of tares is precisely by digging them below the root. So, yard analogy would suggest digging fungus below its root by cutting large enough chunk of skin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alista

Ringworm isn't like a mole gone cancerous, it's a skin irritation in response to a fungal invasion. There is no "root" to rip out,

But isn't fungus supposed to have root, just like mushrooms do? I mean, if you look at ringworm infected skin under the microscope, what would you see?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alista

but in disturbing the skin layers you risk giving the fungus deeper penetration into your body.

What if you cut AROUND the root as opposed to ACROSS the root? In other words you pick chunk of skin large enough that everything that is infected, however slightly,, is well ABOVE the knife while the knife itself cuts through healthy skin? That is analogous to the garden where, in order to get rid of tares, you cut BELOW their root as opposed to across the root.

Now, of course, in order to do that, you have to know how deep the roots of fungus grow -- which is one of the things I am trying to ask in this post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alista

I could see pouring bleach on it, or setting it on fire or something if you were looking for something to appropriately express your horror and disgust and to have a bit of pain while you're at it

It has nothing to do with this. Rather I am a bit fascinated by the structure of fungus-infected skin and this fascination leads me to ask those questions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alista

but as far as effective removal, a few days with an over the counter anti-fungal should give you at least some relief - and keep it from spreading and f it's minor should fix you right up.

I remember having athlete's foot for 10 years and the antifungal cream would take it out for a while and then it would come back. That is another thing that makes me wonder what would have happened if I were to simply cut off that part of the skin.

Cutting out gets rid of it instantly while in case of cream you have to wait for days or weeks. Well its true that if you cut it out then there will be a wound and you would have to wait for wound to heal. But, at least, you won't have to deal with itchiness any more: you know wound won't itch UNLESS the roots of fungus went deeper than you thought -- which brings us back to one of the questions asked in OP.

I believe the ringworm is but a symptom of your problems. Don't cut up your body. I am not sure what is going on but its deeper than a skin fungus.

I get your point when it comes to allergies. If you have food allergy in a form of eczema then it is pointless to cut off eczema spots because you will get new ones anyway.

However, in case of ringworm its a lot more local and thats why cutting it off makes more sense. Now, its true that ringworm might be more likely when you have other conditions such as diabetes. But this is only statistical and not always true -- in my case I don't have diabetes. And even if you were talking about someone else who had it, still having diabetes itself won't guarantee that they will get ringworm tomorrow so they can still cut off their existing ringworm and then it will be few years before they get new one.

I find it hard to believe that you have such a small amount of ringworm that it would be possible to cut off that much skin.

I've had ringworm, and I wouldn't have been able to cut off all the epidermis on my feet. Have you ever seen "degloving" injuries? Google it. That's what my feet would have looked like.

Instead I got a common off the shelf anti fungal remedy. Problem solved.

You don't know how far it has spread. Are you prepared to cut off all the skin on that limb?

I found that one kind of medication worked better for my fungus than another. So if it doesn't work, try another. Try creams. Try powders. Try sprays. But give each time to work. And once you think it's cured, use it for at least another week.